It was a perhaps fitting, if unintended, tribute that when the news of Florian Schneider’s death was made public this month, the techno clubs of Berlin were silent. As co-founder of the electronic band Kraftwerk, Schneider was a musical pioneer whose many legacies include the relentless beat of one of the most enduring genres in modern music.
Techno has been the soundtrack of Berlin since the once-divided city was reunited 30 years ago. While it is by no means exclusive to the German capital, no city has become quite as identified with it. It was in clubs, such as Tresor and E-Werk, that east and west Berliners came together in the immediate post-wall years. Those venues would be overtaken by others such as Berghain, bucket-list destinations for many of the stream of visitors who flock (or at least they did in pre-pandemic times) to the city.
Yet techno’s roots lie elsewhere and in a different chapter in modern German history. To a significant degree they can be found on the banks of the Rhine in Düsseldorf, in the heart of “old” West Germany, where, half a century ago, Schneider and fellow art student Ralf Hütter founded Kraftwerk. Classically schooled, they began with traditional instruments and the shaggy style of the time, before moving on to sharp suits and electronics. The sons of professionals recast themselves as Musikarbeiter (music workers) forging the sound of a bright, technology-driven future.
As distinctive as they might have appeared, Kraftwerk were part of a broader social and cultural upheaval that swept West Germany in the 1960s and ’70s. This found its expression across the creative spectrum, from art to the many bands, lumped together under the heading Krautrock, that pounded out the back beat of a nation under reconstruction.
Central to this remaking was a reckoning with the Nazi past and the desire to create something new. For some, this meant radical experiments in form. Others ditched their native tongue or lyrics altogether so as to appear anything but German — an earnest, uncompromising act that some saw as a reflection of the national stereotype. Kraftwerk opted for an embrace of the modern that also drew heavily on the past, from the clean, undecorated aesthetic of Bauhaus to yearning romanticism. The result found fans, imitators and adaptors from Detroit to Manchester. The roll-call of artists inspired by the boys from Düsseldorf arcs from David Bowie to Afrika Bambaataa.
The traffic was two-way. Kraftwerk’s breakthrough track “Autobahn” was said to have been inspired by The Beach Boys — the celebration of the majestic sweep of tarmac through the forests a Teutonic echo of the thrill of the surf (other accounts differ). Avowedly international in outlook, they were also very German and very rooted in their home region and town, the so-called writing desk of the industrial Ruhr. Düsseldorf was also a centre for the arts and creative industries. Schneider’s father was an architect who designed some of the signature buildings of the newly prosperous West Germany.
This world faded from view over the past 30 years as attention, energy and political power shifted east to Berlin, from the Rhine to the Spree, the provincial to the metropolitan. Yet, recently there has been a reappraisal of the “old” west, and even a nostalgia for when the republic was younger and the world a more certain place.
Such wishful thinking may soon be bolstered with facts. The frontrunners to succeed Angela Merkel as head of the Christian Democrats are from the Rhineland, a traditional power base. Some artists who moved east have now returned, says Dieter Rübel, co-curator of a landmark exhibition on the 1970s Düsseldorf art scene.
Germany’s cultural commentariat are yet to be convinced that there will be a renewed flowering of world-class creative activity. Some veterans note that, while the music continues to appeal, the context in which it was born has long gone. The bright future that Kraftwerk once looked forward to has become a darker place.
Schneider left the band in 2008. A line-up under Mr Hütter’s leadership continues to play remixes of old work — to the dismay of some. “It’s pure nostalgia,” says David Toop, a London-based musician and professor of audio culture. “Nostalgia for the future — that’s what’s so depressing about it.”
"sound" - Google News
May 13, 2020 at 04:02PM
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How Kraftwerk’s embrace of the future came to sound like nostalgia - Financial Times
"sound" - Google News
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